Those familiar with Monero's predecessors will be more familiar with the term *wallet* to describe this. In Monero we call this an account, and it is a private account owned and operated by a Monero user.

Your account contains all of the Monero @transactions you have sent and received. Your account balance is a sum of all the Monero you've received, less the Monero you've sent. When using Monero you may notice that your account has two balances, a locked and an unlocked balance. The unlocked balance contains funds that can be spent immediately, and the locked balance contains funds that you can't spend right now. You may receive a transaction that has an @unlock-time set, or you may have sent some Monero and are waiting for the @change to come back to your wallet, both situations that could lead to those funds being locked for a time.

A key difference between traditional electronic currency and Monero is that your account resides only under your control, normally on your computer, and cannot be accessed by anyone else if you [practice good security](#practicing-good-security).

### Multiple Accounts

There are no costs attached to creating a Monero account, and there are no fees charged except for individual @transaction fees that go to @miners.

This means that individuals can easily create a Monero account for themselves as well as a joint account to share with their partner, and individual accounts for their children. Similarly, a business could create separate accounts for each division or group. Since Monero's @transaction fees are quite low, moving funds between accounts is not an expensive exercise.

### Cryptographic Keys

Monero relies heavily on a cryptography principle known as *public/private key cryptography* or *asymmetric cryptography*, which is thoroughly detailed in [this Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography).

Your account is based on two keys, a @spend-key and a @view-key. The @spend-key is special in that it is the single key required to spend your Monero funds, whereas the @view-key allows you to reveal your @transactions to a third party, for example for auditing or accounting purposes. These keys in your account also play an important role in Monero's @transaction's privacy.

The private keys for both of these must be protected by you in order to retain your account privacy. On the other hand, the public keys are obviously public (they are part of your Monero account address). For normal public/private key cryptography someone could send you a private message by encrypting it with either of your public keys, and you would then be the only one able to decrypt it with your private keys.

### Backing Up Your Account

When you manage your own Monero Account with the private @spend-key, you are solely responsible for the security of your funds. Thankfully, Monero makes it very easy to backup your account. When creating a Monero account for the first time you will be given a unique @mnemonic-seed for your account that consists of 13 or 25 words in the language of your choosing. **This seed is the only thing you need to backup for your account**, and so it is imperative that it is written down and stored securely. Never store this seed in a form or location that would allow someone else to see it!

PLEASE NOTE: the following 25 words can be used to recover access to your wallet. Please write them down and store them somewhere safe and secure. Please do not store them in your email or on file storage services outside of your immediate control.

As the example above indicates, it is incredibly important to store these words in safe locations. If you are concerned about the risk of critical loss at your home, for instance, you may want to store a second copy of your seed with your attorney or in a safety deposit box. It is also recommended that it is stored in a way that does not make it obvious that it is your seed, so writing it into a letter or as part of other notes is advisable.

### Practicing Good Security

Over and above backing up your @mnemonic-seed so that you have access to your account in the event of critical data loss, it is also important to practice good security. Use a secure password when creating a local Monero account (not used on [MyMonero](https://mymonero.com) or other web-based account systems).

Don't ever give your Monero account password to anyone, as this can be used to access the Monero on your computer without knowing your @mnemonic-seed. Similarly, make sure you have running and up-to-date antivirus, especially on Windows computers. Finally, be careful when clicking links in emails or on unknown and untrusted websites, as malware installed on your computer can sit and wait for you to access your Monero account before taking the funds from it.

### Leaving Your Account to Next of Kin

Providing access to your Monero account to your next of kin is just as easy as it is to backup your Monero account. Simply leave your @mnemonic-seed to them in your will, or store it somewhere safe where it will be given to them upon the execution of your will. A key advantage to this is that your next of kin won't have to wait for months for a third party to release the funds to them.

In order to browse @I2P sites or services with @Kovri, you'll need an address book. An address book will allow you to translate @I2P websites/services that use the `.i2p`[top-level domain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_level_domain) into an address that @I2P network will understand.

Without an address book, you would be stuck using a @base32-address every time you visit an @I2P website/service - and that's not fun!

### In-depth information

Since [DNS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS) does not exist on the @I2P network, @Kovri also does **not** use DNS or any sort of @canonically-unique-host resolution. Instead, Kovri pairs a @locally-unique-host to a @base64-address @destination in a @subscription. Once your address book is filled with a @subscription, you can resolve your favorite `.i2p` domain site into a usable @I2P destination.

### Creating an Address Book

By default, your installation will come with a default public @subscription called `hosts.txt` in your @data-directory. When @Kovri starts, it loads this subscription and fetches any other subscriptions you've specified. Once loaded, your address book will be appropriately filled. For details on how to manage subscriptions, see @subscription.

### Updating the Address Book

Currently, there are several ways to update your address book:

1. Use a @jump-service to insert I2P addresses into your address book

2. Use a @jump-service to copy/paste an address into your private @subscription

3. Manually add or subtract from a private @subscription

**Note: Kovri is in heavy development. In the future there *will* be easier ways to update the address book**

### Address Book / Naming specification

For specification details and more, visit the [Address Book and Naming Specification](https://geti2p.net/en/docs/naming)

When you send Monero to someone you only need one piece of information, and that is their Monero address. A *raw* Monero address is a set of 95 characters starting with a '4'. The Monero donation address, for instance, is <spanclass="long-term">44AFFq5kSiGBoZ4NMDwYtN18obc8AemS33DBLWs3H7otXft3XjrpDtQGv7SqSsaBYBb98uNbr2VBBEt7f2wfn3RVGQBEP3A</span>.

Because those addresses are long and complex, you will often encounter an @OpenAlias address instead. For example, Monero donations can be sent to <span class="long-term">[email protected]</span> or <span class="long-term">donate.getmonero.org</span>.

If you would like to get an @OpenAlias address of your own then there is some information on the [OpenAlias page](/resources/openalias).

### Integrated address

An integrated address is an address combined with an encrypted 64-bit @payment-ID. A raw integrated address is 106 characters long.

### In-depth Information

The address is actually the concatenation, in Base58 format, of the *public* @spend-key and the *public* @view-key, prefixed with the network byte (the number 18 for Monero) and suffixed with the first four bytes of the Keccac-256 hash of the whole string (used as a checksum).

"An air gap, air wall or air gapping is a network security measure employed on one or more computers to ensure that a secure computer network is physically isolated from unsecured networks, such as the public Internet or an unsecured local area network.[2] The name arises from the technique of creating a network that is physically separated (with a conceptual air gap) from all other networks. The air gap may not be completely literal, as networks employing the use of dedicated cryptographic devices that can tunnel packets over untrusted networks while avoiding packet rate or size variation can be considered air gapped, as there is no ability for computers on opposite sides of the gap to communicate."

A @base64-address is a 516-character [Base64 encoded](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base64) @I2P @destination. @base64-addresses are primarily used for @address-book, @jump-service, and also internally.

A block is a container of @transactions, with a new block being added to the @blockchain once every 2 minutes (see constant `DIFFICULTY_TARGET_V2` defined as 120 seconds), on average.

Blocks also contain a special type of transaction, the @coinbase-transaction, which add newly created Monero to the network.

Blocks are created through the process of @mining, and the @node that successfully mines the block then broadcasts it to each of the @nodes connected to it, who subsequently re-broadcast the block until the entire Monero network has received it.

Fake or bad blocks generally cannot be created, as @nodes that receive blocks always verify the @transactions they contain against a set of consensus rules that all nodes adhere to, including validating the cryptographic @signatures on each transaction.

A @blockchain is a distributed database that continuously grows with a record of all of the transactions that have occurred with a given cryptocurrency. This database is often referred to as a ledger because the data contains a large list of transactions that have taken place. In Monero, these transactions are packaged together into 'blocks' every 2 minutes (on average), and all miners and nodes on the network have copies of these blocks.

### Monero's @Blockchain

Unlike Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, transactions in the Monero @blockchain do not reveal where funds came from or went to, providing anonymity and making the currency completely @fungible. Additionally, the amounts of all transactions are hidden by @RingCT, a feature of Monero. For auditing or other transparency purposes a user can share a @view-key to prove they control certain amounts of Moneroj.

The daemon running on a local @node has to sync with other (remote) @nodes. While it is not fully synced, @wallet may still be connected to the local node. Therefore, the @wallet cannot access the @blocks that are bot yet synced on the local @node.

To allow the @wallet to be immediately usable, the daemon on the local @node uses a bootstrap node to which the RPC request are proxying to, giving access to the missing @blocks.

A Canonically-unique host is a [FQDN](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FQDN) that will canonically resolve to a designated address or set of addresses. Not to be confused with a @locally-unique-host.

### In-depth information

A Canonically-unique host is defined by remote authoritative sources; usually through [DNS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS). When resolving a peer's hostname, you will most likely use an external source for resolution unless you have the following implemented:

- a database file similar to a [hosts file](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_(file))

- an internal-network resolver (which eventually pulls from external sources)

Monero sent as part of a transaction, that returns to your account instead of going to another recipient.

### More Information

The @wallet in the Monero software makes change automatically, but when you send a transaction, you are taking an input that you control and telling the Monero network what to do with it. The input is a "deposit" to your account that you are able to spend. Outputs are the part of the transaction that tells the Monero network where to send the funds.

You might have multiple inputs in your account, in many different denominations (For example: you deposited 0.5 XMR on Friday, and 0.75 XMR on Saturday). So, when have a transaction with an input of 0.5 XMR, but you only want to send 0.1 XMR, your transaction will include a fee to pay the @miner, an output for 0.1 XMR to send to the recipient, and the rest that you want to send back to yourself will be an output back to you (this is called "change"). Once the transaction is completed, the change becomes available to you as an input that you can again split and send with a new transaction.

When you use the Internet for things like news, email, social media, and even Monero, you are most likely using a clearnet connection. This means that *all* of your connections can be tracked, traced, and monitored by:

and even if you use [HTTPS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTPS) or similar (which *encrypts* your transmission), your route is not hidden nor is it anonymous, thus; it is in the *clear*.

### In-depth information

Since a traditional [VPN](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VPN) cannot save you from clearnet (as you are still using *clearnet* (though you are more proxied than without a VPN)), you should use an *anonymous overlay network* to avoid using clearnet directly:

- @Kovri

- @Java-I2P

-[Tor](https://torproject.org/)

These technologies protect you from clearnet by building an anonymous network **over** clearnet to keep your transmissions both encrypted **and** anonymous.

Here is an accurate, [interactive diagram](https://www.eff.org/pages/tor-and-https) provided by the [EFF](https://www.eff.org/) which describes *clearnet* as it relates to **Tor**. The concept also (somewhat) applies to @Kovri and @I2P in terms of anonymity with the exception that: